I have thought since that one of his reasons for choosing me as his travelling companion on this occasion was because he was getting up steam for what he subsequently termed “an alliance with my family”, but the idea never entered my head at the time. A more careless man as to dress I have rarely met, and yet, in all the heat of July in Holland, I noticed that he never appeared without a high, starched collar, which had not even fashion to commend it at that time.
I often chaffed him about his splendid collars, and asked him why he wore them, but without eliciting any response. One evening, as we were walking back to our lodgings in Middeburg, I attacked him for about the thirtieth time on the subject.
“Why on earth do you wear them?” I said.
“You have, I believe, asked me that question many times,” he replied, in his slow, precise utterance, “but always on occasions when I was occupied. I am now at leisure, and I will tell you.”
And he did.
I have put down what he said, as nearly in his own words as I can remember them.
Ten years ago, I was asked to read a paper on English Frescoes at the Institute of British Architects. I was determined to make the paper as good as I could, down to the slightest details, and I consulted many books on the subject, and studied every fresco I could find. My father, who had been an architect, had left me, at his death, all his papers and notebooks on the subject of architecture. I searched them diligently, and found in one of them a slight unfinished sketch of nearly fifty years ago that especially interested me. Underneath was noted, in his clear, small hand –
The sketch held such a fascination for me that I decided to go there and see the fresco for myself. I had only a very vague idea as to where Wet Waste-on-the-Wolds was, but I was ambitious for the success of my paper; it was hot in London, and I set off on my long journey not without a certain degree of pleasure, with my dog Brian, a large nondescript brindled creature, as my only companion.
I reached Pickering, in Yorkshire, in the course of the afternoon, and then began a series of experiments on local lines which ended, after several hours, in my finding myself deposited at a little out-of-the-way station within nine or ten miles of Wet Waste. As no conveyance of any kind was to be had, I shouldered my portmanteau and set out on a long white road that stretched away into the distance over the bare, treeless wold. I must have walked for several hours, over a waste of moorland patched with heather, when a doctor passed me, and gave me a lift to within a mile of my destination. The mile was a long one, and it was quite dark by the time I saw the feeble glimmer of lights in front of me, and found that I had reached Wet Waste. I had considerable difficulty in getting anyone to take me in; but at last I persuaded the owner of the public house to give me a bed, and, quite tired out, I got into it as soon as possible for fear he should change his mind, and fell asleep to the sound of a little stream below my window.
I was up early next morning, and enquired directly after breakfast the way to the clergyman’s house, which I found was close at hand. At Wet Waste everything was close at hand. The whole village seemed composed of a straggling row of one-storeyed grey stone houses, the same colour as the stone walls that separated the few fields enclosed from the surrounding waste, and as the little bridges over the beck that ran down one side of the grey wide street. Everything was grey. The church, the low tower of which I could see at a little distance, seemed to have been built of the same stone; so was the parsonage when I came up to it, accompanied on my way by a mob of rough, uncouth children, who eyed me and Brian with half-defiant curiosity.
The clergyman was at home, and after a short delay I was admitted. Leaving Brian in charge of my drawing materials, I followed the servant into a low panelled room, in which, at a latticed window, a very old man was sitting. The morning light fell on his white head bent low over a litter of papers and books.
“Mr er—?” he said, looking up slowly, with one finger keeping his place in a book.
“Blake.”
“Blake,” he repeated after me, and was silent.
I told him that I was an architect, that I had come to study a fresco in the crypt of his church, and asked for the keys.
“The crypt?” he said, pushing up his spectacles and peering hard at me. “The crypt has been closed for thirty years. Ever since—” And he stopped short.
“I should be much obliged for the keys,” I said again. He shook his head.
“No,” he said. “No one goes in there now.”
“It is a pity,” I remarked, “for I have come a long way with that one object”; and I told him about the paper I had been asked to read, and the trouble I was taking with it.
He became interested. “Ah!” he said, laying down his pen, and removing his finger from the page before him. “I can understand that. I also was young once, and fired with ambition. The lines have fallen to me in somewhat lonely places, and for forty years I have held the cure of souls in this place, where, truly, I have seen but little of the world, though I myself may be not unknown in the paths of literature. Possibly you may have read a pamphlet, written by myself, on the Syrian version of the Three Authentic Epistles of Ignatius?”
“Sir,” I said, “I am ashamed to confess that I have not time to read even the most celebrated books. My one object in life is my art.
“You are right, my son,” said the old man, evidently disappointed, but looking at me kindly. “There are diversities of gifts, and if the Lord has entrusted you with a talent, look to it. Lay it not up in a napkin.”
I said I would not do so if he would lend me the keys of the crypt. He seemed startled by my recurrence to the subject and looked undecided.
“Why not?” he murmured to himself. “The youth appears a good youth. And superstition! What is it but distrust in God!”
He got up slowly and, taking a large bunch of keys out of his pocket, opened with one of them an oak cupboard in the corner of the room.
“They should be here,” he muttered, peering in, “but the dust of many years deceives the eye. See, my son, if among these parchments there be two keys: one of iron and very large, and the other steel, and of a long thin appearance.”
I went eagerly to help him, and presently found in a back drawer two keys tied together, which he recognized at once.
“Those are they,” he said. “The long one opens the first door at the bottom of the steps which go down against the outside wall of the church hard by the sword graven in the wall. The second opens (but it is hard of opening and of shutting) the iron door within the passage leading to the crypt itself. My son, is it necessary to your treatise that you should enter this crypt?”
I replied that it was absolutely necessary.
“Then take them,” he said, “and in the evening you will bring them to me again.”
I said I might want to go several days running, and asked if he would not allow me to keep them till I had finished my work, but on that point he was firm.
“Likewise,” he added, “be careful that you lock the first door at the foot of the steps before you unlock the second, and lock the second also while you are within. Furthermore, when you come out, lock the iron inner door as well as the wooden one.”
I promised I would do so and, after thanking him, hurried away, delighted at my success in obtaining the keys. Finding Brian and my sketching materials waiting for me in the porch, I eluded the vigilance of my escort of children by taking the narrow private path between the parsonage and the church which was close at hand, standing in a quadrangle of ancient yews.
The church itself was interesting, and I noticed that it must have arisen out of the ruins of a previous building, judging from the number of fragments of stone caps and arches, bearing traces of very early carving, now built into the walls. There were incised crosses, too, in some places, and one especially caught my attention, being flanked by a large sword. It was in trying to get a nearer look at this that I stumbled, and, looking down, saw at my feet a flight of narrow stone steps green with moss and mildew. Evidently this was the entrance to the crypt. I at once descended the steps, taking care of my footing, for they were damp and slippery in the extreme. Brian accompanied me, as nothing would induce him to remain behind. By the time I had reached the bottom of the stairs, I found myself almost in darkness, and I had to strike a light before I could find the keyhole and the proper key to fit into it. The door, which was of wood, opened inwards fairly easily, although an accumulation of mould and
